Comment by randomdata | Hacker News Reader

Comment by randomdata | Hacker News Reader

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Cheaper doesn't seem feasible, at least not without essentially duplicating the meat production process (maybe lab grown meat will get us there someday). Human grade food is more expensive, often considerably so. Animals essentially get the leftovers that we can't eat so they are afforded a huge price advantage and it is not clear how that is to be overcome sustainably.

Circumstances – widespread disease, for example – could see the price of meat exceed these products for periods of time. At which point these products could become contenders on factors of price, but as soon as the market starts to shift the price of meat will fall on the decrease in demand, and you're back to square one. Especially as meat has lag time to market so the price will fall further than you might expect before meat producers are able to pull back on production. There is nothing to keep people eating these products if there is nothing to differentiate them in the market.

The real value proposition is that it is different. A new food option to choose from. If it can be made great, where it is craved as much as meat, then they might have something. Until then, I can see why they are struggling.

You are missing the core technology point that drives the underlying thesis here - ‘every manufactured good, gets cheaper per unit as you make more and more of it’.

Whether this is from the lab, a recipe of plant inputs, or some other currently unknown thing - if you are able to develop and commercialize a product around a ‘specific technology’, you can drive the cost of that down through experience and scale.

Animals are a VERY thermodynamically inefficient way of converting plants to ‘high quality proteins’. We have automated the crap out of the food processing system. There are no material efficiencies left to be had. Compare that to options which are on paper thermodynamically superior (I.e. not supporting the life of an animal to only use their muscle tissue).

By taking a technology with a much higher theoretical efficiency, and then scaling that up - creates the classic technology disruption scenario. ->‘It’s the cheaper version of X commodity, why wouldn’t I choose that?’

> Animals are a VERY thermodynamically inefficient way of converting plants to ‘high quality proteins’. We have automated the crap out of the food processing system. There are no material efficiencies left to be had. Compare that to options which are on paper thermodynamically superior (I.e. not supporting the life of an animal to only use their muscle tissue).

This really is such a cool take on it that it bums me out to say…

>why wouldn’t I choose that?

…because I just[0] don’t wanna eat fake meat.

[0] On a very deep, perhaps primal level. I can feel it rooted so far in my brain it’s hard to convey. Rather eat peanut butter at every meal.

> Animals are a VERY thermodynamically inefficient way of converting plants to ‘high quality proteins’.

That would be pertinent if they were eating the same foods, but they don't eat the same foods. They eat the stuff we won't eat, produced largely either as a byproduct of the production of the foods we do eat or produced on lands that cannot support the foods we eat.

The more efficient we get in producing plants to eat, the more efficient byproducts there are for animals to eat, so you get a continuous relationship of meat becoming cheaper as other foods become cheaper. Economies of scale can only get you so far when the raw material inputs are your main cost centre.

The industry will have to move towards using those 'waste' products in order to be competitive, but at that point you're essentially just replicating animal processes and you're up against a 'machine' doing the same that has had millions of years to develop itself.

> Cheaper doesn't seem feasible, at least not without essentially duplicating the meat production process

I'd say cheaper doesn't seem feasible without duplicating the subsidies received by the meat industry (including farming of animal feed). Give similar subsidies to the plant-based-meat industry, and I'd bet that meat replacements will be much cheaper than meat.

But there's a political risk at that: Meat industry has huge political influence. If their profits are hurt, they would probably demand even more subsidies for covering their "loss". Or you can expect farmers on the streets, and your political oposition taking advantage of the situation.

> Meat industry has huge political influence.

I'll grant you poultry (chicken, turkey) producers with their sweet, sweet supply management deal. But producers of other meat products? I'd say they are essentially ignored in political circles. If they actually had huge political influence they'd be all over supply management like the poultry producers are afforded. If you venture out into the backroads it's painfully obvious how much richer the poultry producers are compared to their beef and pork producing neighbours, and it is downright sad when you look at those producing less common meats.

The government pays 40% of the insurance premiums for crop insurance (insurance against mother nature) which is a subsidy to plant growers, and is sometimes claimed to by a subsidy to animal producers by extension, but the program doesn't factor in where the product goes. Navy beans grown for humans are very bit as eligible for those subsidies as corn grown for cattle. While it is fair to call it a subsidy, it would be quite disingenuous to claim that is a meat subsidy but not a 'meat alternative' subsidy as well.

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